Pupils Dilating, Diaphragm Painting
by SleepDeprivedFemale
Summary: A young distraught Thanos has a talk with a mysterious girl that's been hanging out with him lately.


**Heya guys, I ain't dead yet, just drowning in responsibilities and stuff :)**

 **For those that read my other stories, After Death and an Unorthodox Alliance should have chapters up sooner than later but I can't stick to a schedule right now. Shit's fucked.**

 **Anyways, here's a thing that follows Thanos Rising canon, kind of.**

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 **Pupils Dilating, Diaphragm Painting**

Thanos stifled a yawn as he made his way into the living room. He was searching for his father, but the man was absent from his lab and Thanos had spent the last few minutes scouring the house, and the living room was the last place he expected his father to be. They weren't a social bunch, Thanos' family.

His search was successful, and Thanos frowned at the familiar silhouette sitting pensively at one of the sofas in the inner reaches of the room.

"Is everything alright, father?" The young titan's voice was low and childish. His small frame even more so.

At the darkened corner of the living room, where the lamp's light was sparse, the boy's father let out a small sight. "It's nothing grave Thanos." The man's figure switched to profile, as he gazed over the large window displaying a starless night. "A distant family member died of old age. That is all."

"…Died?"

The older man nodded absentmindedly. "I'll have to go offer my condolences of course, which will put a hamper to my work, not to mention the possibility of us being invited to the funeral -a waste of time if you ask my opinion-"

Thanos however, paid no further attention to his father's words. For the first time in years, the young Titan was mentally stumped.

Thanos was mature for his age, or so the young Titan liked to think. He was easily outsmarting his peers in grades, intelligence tests and any other meagre form of quantifying his abilities the school had. Thanos excelled at everything, fueled by a desire to upkeep his family's stellar reputation.

Yet when it came to actual life experience, the boy was… rather lacking. Case in point, though he knew about death, about the mechanisms behind aging and the various physiological changes a corpse underwent, it was a cold distant clinical knowledge. The closest thing Thanos had seen to death were the occasional unfortunate lizards or lab specimens his class was given to dissect. But right now, with a relative having dies, even if distant… it all became strangely personal, like a historian finding themselves in the past.

It was silly, and Thanos was aware of that.

That didn't stop the nightmare that followed, a terrifying visage made up with piles of corpses and a skeletal cloaked figure towering above them, with Thanos watching it all.

Alone.

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"Hey."

Thanos looked up to see a familiar face stare down at him.

It was a girl roughly his age, one with short black hair and piercing green eyes. To leave it at that, however, would be a big disservice to the peculiarity of this mysterious individual

Simply put, the girl was weird. Thanos didn't know her name, and any attempts he made at finding out ended in blunt deflections.

Thanos knew frightfully little about her. She was a strange individual with an off-putting appearance. Sometimes, Thanos would see how her gestures were jerky, such as when she blinked and one eye closed a moment faster than the other. How her lips would be stretched uncomfortably thin when she spoke, how the skin would shift unnaturally as if I was sliding over the bones with no connective tissue underneath. The skin itself looked weathered, like smooth stone who had underwent centuries of sandstorms. Her frame could not be described as healthy as well. Her form-fitting jumpsuit only accentuated her lack of muscle, with ribs jutting out from her sternum, her arms and legs all made up of sharp angles as if fat and muscle were foreign concepts.

These qualities, in combination with her unusual markings on lips and eyes, made Thanos wonder if the girl had a rare genetic condition like Thanos' deviant syndrome, which caused the boy's skin to be purple and rough. Thanos wasn't rude enough to bluntly ask her though; he knew too well how people preferred such things to go unmentioned.

"You're acting… unusual." Her voice was low-pitched and gravely, and the first time Thanos heard it he felt a chill up his spine.

"Why do you think so?"

The girl leaned into Thanos' personal space and peered over his blank notepad page. "You've been staring at a blank piece of paper for half an hour." "Usually by that point you'd have made some… impressive drawings."

It was another strange thing. The girl never shied away from the gore Thanos drew; if anything, she seemed mesmerized by it. Inquiries in any reasons as to why only ended up in the mysterious girl saying she appreciated looking things from a new perspective, and nothing more.

"I'm not in the mood today."

"And why's that?"

Thanos paused. "I…" He stopped himself, briefly glancing at the girl's visage before looking away for no perceived reason as to why. "A relative passed away."

"Oh?" Her tone was blank; a rarity.

Thanos shook his head. "It's not what you think. I wasn't close to them, I don't even know their name."

"Then why are you in such a bad mood?"

"It caused me to think."

"About life, the universe and existence in general?" She asked, her voice coated with a bemused humorous tone.

"Actually… yes."

The girl didn't respond, instead tilting her head to the side, the ghost of a smirk never leaving her face.

"Just… what's the point?" Thanos began. "What's the point to any of this?"

The girl gave him a small pout. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"If we're just going to perish, then why live in the first place? What's the point if it's all in vain?"

"Is that desperation I sense?"

"It's annoyance. I feel like I've been told a lie, 'oh you should study hard, get a good grade and go to a good university and get a good job to maintain your family's good standing' and what's the point to any of this if we all end up as dust anyways?!" Grunting in frustration, Thanos glared at a small patch of wild flowers growing at the cracks close to his foot, and had to surpass his urge to stomp them. "There's no point, is there?"

The girl shrugged nonchalantly. "Don't ask me"

"What I said affects you as well. You'll die too."

The girl's smile became just a bit wider in response.

"I just…" Thanos huffed. "I just don't see the point."

"Maybe there isn't one."

Thanos choked an indignant protest. "Don't be silly, there has to be something. Something we're missing… As we know, the Universe rans on certain laws, has patterns and so does life, so there must be something, how the whole thing began-"

"Maybe it was an accident," the girl cut him off, her face an apathetic mask. "It's not as if you'd be here wondering about it if a very certain series of events hadn't happened."

Thanos grimaced in response.

"And what if it is just pure chance?" the girl continued, leaning closer to Thanos. "Are you just gonna stand there moping, alone-?"

"Don't you have a class to go to anyways?" Thanos snapped at the girl, a clumsy attempt in changing the subject of their conversation.

Surprisingly, the girl obliged and only raised an amused eyebrow at the young Titan. "I'm skipping." The answer was automatic and expected. Thanos would be surprised if the girl hadn't told him she was playing hooky.

"I don't think I've ever seen you go to class."

"I find them boring."

"Then why are you here in the first place?"

"I find other things…" she glanced at Thanos and quickly flashed him a predatory grin. "interesting."

Thanos shrugged and went bank to staring at his empty canvas. "You're weird."

The girl let out a small cackle which sounded like chalk grinding on blackboard. "Takes one to know one…"

"What do you anyways, when you don't go to class? Do you just stand around doing nothing?"

"Tsk, tsk, how low you think of me." The girl placed a hand on her chest in a mock offended matter. "I lead a hectic life, actually."

"You skip all your classes," Thanos shot back in a dry tone.

"A very hectic life."

"What do you even do then?"

"I…" For a moment she hesitated, as if debating her answer. Her stretched smile returned in full force just moments after. "I babysit."

Thanos raised an eyebrow. "Babysit?"

"Yup. Quite a few people as well. At times, it feels like an entire universe."

"Right… Anyways, unlike you, I plan on actually attending my lessons," the boy said with a strained tone as he packed his notebook and other belonging into his school bag. "So if you don't mind…"

"Have fun dying of boredom," the girl mumbled as Thanos gathered the last of his things and left her with a court nod, which she reciprocated with an unsettling smile.

She kept her gaze on him, even when Thanos turned his back on her while trying -and failing- to blend in with the rest of his peers, his tall stature and purple skin causing him to stick out like a sore thumb.

"Ah, no painting today, what a shame…" the girl said to herself when Thanos disappeared into the school building, arching her head back and briefly closing her eyes. Around her, students and teachers passed her by without sparing her a glance. "Still…"

The girl looked around her, slowly losing her arrogant composure. Her frame became slump her spine poking prominently from her jumpsuit, cheeks drawn and eyes bored. She scanned the apathetic crowd as it passed her by, until she found herself gazing at the building where Thanos was.

"Such an interesting character you are, Thanos."

The flowers close to her had withered, their petals dried and darkened, as black as the girl's half-lidded abysmal irises.

"Such an interesting mortal…"

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 **As a sidenote, Thanos whole spiel about the point of existence was meant to be confusing and nonsensical, since he's a kid at that point.**

 **Please review/favourite if you enjoyed the story :)**


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